Support DFC challenge to water district’s goals

Dear editor,

Many residents may think the efforts by End Op, L.P., to pipe 71 million gallons of our water per day is not happening.

Quite the contrary, the plan to take Bastrop and Lee County groundwater is still viable and ordinary citizens are still asking how this could be good for our communities and the Carrizo- Wilcox aquifer that serves 12 million Texas citizens.

Environmental Stewardship, led by Steve Box, has filed a challenge in Groundwater Management Area 12.

We believe that the “Desired Future Conditions,” the parameters set for pumping the aquifer by our water code, may not have been set as rigorously as the science of hydrology allows.

We are not pointing fingers at any one person, governmental agency or even water marketers, who simply want to sell our water for short-term profit.

We are concerned that:

• Water rights are being sold by many landowners in Milam, Lee, Bastrop and other counties. End Op alone says it controls 17,000 acres in Lee and Bastrop counties.

• Water is assumed to be an absolute property right in Texas, so landowners rationalize pumping water from under their land as well as their neighbors’ land

• Our life-blood is being sold on the open market for use in the high- grow th areas along I-35.

Worst of all, no elected officials are standing up to fight this calamity.

Granted, your faucet will come on tomorrow, next week and the next few years.

But in the mid-term, we will be facing the same water shortages that Texans, cities and towns have been facing recently. Eventually, we will simply run out of water.

Our portion of the Carrizo- Wilcox aquifer recharges very slowly, resulting in thousands of years old drinking water.

Have we, as a people, become self-centered and careless about future generations, and thoughtless about even our own future?

Are we willing to stand by and let this happen?

Years ago, San Antonio’s thirst for our water led a water official to tell us, “ You’ll just have to move somewhere else.”

There are two hearings that ordinary citizens, officials and other community leaders need to attend, Feb. 29 (for End Op) and March 7th (for Environmental Stewardship), from 10- 4 at t he Milano Convent ion Center.

The Texas Water Development Board set these hearings in an out of the way place, with no public eating facilities or other amenities, to discourage citizen participation.